SOURCE: Sabin, Roger. “Strip Teasers.” Observer Review (24 December 2000): 18.

In the following review, Sabin discusses several modern graphic novels, including Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, Daniel Clowes's Ghost World, and Joe Sacco's Safe Area Goražde, arguing that such works represent “a new generation of cartoonists pushing the envelope of what a comic can encompass.”

The rise of the graphic novel as a format has meant that publishers can market their products to bookshops, and thus reach an audience away from the specialist—and very male-dominated—comics shops. Which is just as well, because those shops have been having a hard time lately. Although things have stabilised since the drastic recession of the late 1990s, it is estimated that there are still only a third of the number in the US and UK that there were a decade ago.

Fortunately, the artform does not equate...